MUSIC BY FAMOUS PEOPLE

Anyone who expects this to be filled with fresh revelations is hereby advised to travel to India, track down the nearest maharishi and meditate until the delusion passes. To put it another way, the Beatles are arguably the most heavily bootlegged artists in pop-music history, and while some of the material collected here (chiefly the earliest stuff) may come as a surprise to Fab Four fanatics, a lot of it won't. And fanatics are whom Anthology will appeal to most: The average listener is unlikely to care that the version of "Please Please Me" included here lacks the harmonica accompaniment of the previously available take and features a slightly altered drum track. Moreover, the "group's" recasting of "Free As a Bird"--a 1977 John Lennon discard to which Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr added their bits nearly two decades later--won't change any lives. It's listenable, but even with the Herculean efforts of producer and onetime Beatles imitator Jeff Lynne and additional lyrics by McCartney, whose new words tug vigorously at the nostalgia string, the track still sounds like it wouldn't have made the final cut for Let It Be. But since we're talking about the Beatles (and not, say, Herman's Hermits), these problems aren't fatal. To put it mildly, this was a worthy band--so worthy that even their demos, live tapes and random throwaways (like the germinal instrumentals "Cayenne" and "Cry for a Shadow") are of considerable appeal for the most basic reason: They sound good. The spoken-word interludes, included in an effort to replicate Anthology's television twin, can sometimes be obtrusive if you're wanting to listen to this set rather than to study it. But with the exception of "Bird," the surviving boys have resisted updating their rareties; they simply let it be. Of course, they've also made an order form for band merchandise a part of the Anthology liner notes; the Beatles mini-backpack, made of hemp and tinted forest green, is only $40. As the Rutles put it so well, "All you need is cash."

Red Hot Chili Peppers
One Hot Minute
(Warner Bros.)

The Peppers are a fine band that broke through at the wrong time. Their early albums, though erratic and sometimes clogged with extraneous flotsam, were entertaining and quite promising--1985's Freaky Styley, produced by George Clinton, especially so. By contrast, 1991's Blood Sugar Sex Magik was easily the Peppers' worst, a capricious recording in which the funk seemed forced, the rock wasn't raucous enough and Anthony Kiedis's attempts at confessional poetry called to mind Janis Ian on a bad day. But because it was also a commercial breakthrough, the disc has had the unfortunate effect of convincing the players that they were moving in the right direction. It's no surprise, then, that we get more of the same on Minute. Rick Rubin's production isn't half as biting as on Blood, but neither are the scraps he has to work on, which are more calculatedly adult (read: "bland") than ever before. "Warped" and "One Big Mob" have their loud moments, but they also contain lyrical segments meant to showcase the instrumentalists' newfound maturity; instead, they bring the proceedings to a screeching halt. The grooves are equally flaccid--"Aeroplane" and "My Friends" never rise above lukewarm pop, and "Walkabout" couldn't get someone suffering from Saint Vitus' dance on his feet. Part of the blame can be ascribed to new guitarist Dave Navarro (the Jane's Addiction veteran), who finds it difficult to sharpen his riffs to their essences, as funk guitarists must. But the real culprit is Kiedis, who's so in thrall to his own junior-high emotions that he can't even use the title "Tearjerker" ironically; he actually seems to believe that Hallmark-reject lines like "Lows are the way/So hard to stay/Guess now you know/I love you so" will cause listeners to puddle up. The disc has a few highlights--"Shallow Be Thy Game" sounds all right--but not nearly enough. One hot minute in an hour's worth of music isn't a very impressive percentage.

Bruce Springsteen
The Ghost of Tom Joad
(Columbia)

Didn't like Nebraska much. Back in 1982, when journalists were gushing over it, I resisted mightily. It was too self-conscious for me, too obviously an effort to use primitivism to achieve a highbrow literary end. And the music? Well, the music seemed tacked on, unnecessary, one grim strum indistinguishable from the next. I wasn't in love with Reaganism either, but it seemed to me that there were more entertaining, less pretentious ways of attacking it. So why am I more favorably inclined toward Joad, which might as well be called Nebraska, Part Two? For one thing, the relative polish of the production and the inclusion of backup musicians on about half the tracks indicate that Springsteen '95 isn't so lost in a pose; he's revealing more of himself rather than merely pretending to be Woody Guthrie. There's also alluring detail and a reportorial air in tunes such as "Sinaloa Cowboys"--about two Mexican brothers running a methamphetamine lab in the middle of nowhere--that proves Springsteen isn't engaging in dilettantism. He's so committed to his subjects that he doesn't mind getting his hands dirty. As before, a lot of the ditties blend into each other, in part because of the monotony of tone, in part because many of these tales of desperation are shaped by comparable narrative devices and wind up in pretty much the same place: hell. But this time around, Springsteen offers a few careful embellishments, with stirring results. "Youngstown," in particular, benefits from this loosening-up; Marty Rifkin's pedal-steel guitar and Soosie Tyrell's violin swathe this portrait of a dying Ohio industrial town in an atmosphere that's rich and bona fide. Just as important, the songs are generally stronger. "Highway 29" is a noir straight out of James M. Cain--I'd love to see the movie version--while the concluding "My Best Was Never Good Enough" bears some of the songwriter's flintiest lines ever: "Now life's like a box of chocolates/You never know what you're going to get/Stupid is as stupid does/And all the rest of that shit/Come on, pretty baby, call my bluff/'Cause for you my best was never enough." Springsteen delivers these words gently--he doesn't rub your nose in them--but underneath them is an anger we haven't heard from him in a long, long while. Not as many people are listening to him now as they once were, but that hardly matters. Because Springsteen is trying again.

Ace of Base
The Bridge
(Arista)

Back in the mid-Seventies, when ABBA was enjoying a peculiar dominion over the singles charts, most rock listeners saw the popularity of the act's damnably catchy, astoundingly superfluous smashes ("Waterloo," "Fernando," "Dancing Queen" and the rest) as a sure sign of impending apocalypse. But recently the group has benefited from historical revisionism; now a goodly percentage of critics and just-plain-folks see the ABBA catalog as a treasure trove of pop ready-mades deserving of, believe it or don't, respect. Will the space junk assembled for you by the widely reviled Ace of Base--the Nineties Abba--eventually receive the same kind of belated praise? It's certainly a possibility: "Beautiful Life," the current single, is a concoction that Frida Lyngstad and Agnetha Faltskog would be proud to call their own, while lesser sonic hors d'oeuvres such as "Strange Ways" (a faux-exotic disco stomper) and "Wave Wet Sand," whose incomprehensible lyrics seem to have come about as a result of poor translation, would fit nicely on the soundtrack of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Heard today, The Bridge seems contrived and goofy at best, agonizing and toxic at worst. But in the year 2015, it may be an entirely different story. Then again, probably not.

Bonnie Raitt
Road Tested
(Capitol)

Road Tested shouldn't immediately be taken as a sign that Raitt has nothing new to say but wants to have recent product in the stores by December. That's because Raitt has something to prove: that she can still be the formidable blues mama she once was even though her recent recordings have pushed her into the Land of Easy Listening. But instead of assembling a rockin' band and blowing through a spare lineup of Chicago-style classics, she's gathered around her a collection of facile studio pros, like drummer Ricky Fataar, and invited several big-name guest stars to lend their voices to this project. Some of the invitees make sense: The contributions of Ruth Brown, Charles Brown and Kim Wilson give "Never Make Your Move Too Soon" a nice barroom feel. And while I wouldn't have minded a bit if Jackson Browne hadn't chipped in on a couple of songs, I'm willing to cut Raitt some slack given their no-nukes affiliations of years past. But there's more Bruce Hornsby here than is strictly necessary, and the appearance by Bryan Adams is as disturbing as a date with Tiny Tim. Moreover, the prevalence of pop ballads (including the oft-heard "Angel From Montgomery") undercuts Raitt's purpose, and her occasional risks, like a wrongheaded rendition of the Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House," generally come a cropper. Maybe the Land of Easy Listening is where she belongs these days.

Ornette Coleman & Prime Time
Tone Dialing
(Harmolodic/Verve)

For some, the noises made by Coleman's saxophone are horrific; the slenderness of his tone and his willingness to flaunt unusual sounds without regard to standard chord progressions and harmonics renders him utterly unlistenable. Others are more adventurous--so much so that they regard Coleman's mid-Seventies/Eighties drift into something resembling jazz-funk as a prostitution of his free-jazz legacy. Given these extremes, this disc, the first new Coleman offering since 1988 (and his first for his own Harmolodic imprint), may prove a rough sell. The album features Coleman at his most accessible, which won't please hardcore types. But that doesn't mean jazz-listeners-come-lately will immediately embrace either the giddy grooves of "Street Blues," the updated skronk of "OAC" or the more recognizable post-bop of "La Capella." Even the relatively lyrical "If I Knew As Much About You (As You Know About Me)" and Coleman's delicately imaginative reworking of "Bach Prelude" demand that the audience bring to the table open ears and an open mind. So who is Tone Dialing for? Anyone who recognized 1982's Of Human Feelings and 1988's Virgin Beauty for the lively, late-period sagas they were; anyone gladdened by Coleman's still-active aesthetic restlessness (exhibited on the rappish "Search for Life" and the Keith Jarrett-esque "Kathelin Gray"); and anyone who gets a thrill out of hearing perhaps the greatest living jazzman still pushing the envelope's edge.

k.d. lang
all you can eat
(Warner Bros.)

Sure, lang's country affectations were contrived, but they also had plenty of zing: Her big-boned-gal-channeling-Patsy Cline character was a delightfully off-kilter invention whose phoniness was purely intentional. And in spite of her recent persona change, she's still got a sense of humor, as anyone who saw her hilarious appearance on The Larry Sanders Show this season can testify. She denies that calling her CD all you can eat is a playful reference to her sexual preference, but I argue that the title is a pretty funny gag, too. (On her latest, however, k.d. seems to believe that cracking a smile would be a betrayal of all she's become.) "If I Were You" has a certain spunk, but it's filtered through the platter's genteel, loungey production gloss--a sound that's suitably cosmopolitan but distressingly pallid. "Infinite and Unforeseen," on the other hand, is an exercise in seriositude whose apparent earnestness only makes it tougher to swallow. Maybe lang's urban sophisticate constitutes just as much a role as anything else she's played, and she'll ditch it after she's wrung from it all the juice it holds. If so, she needs to hurry--because there's not much juice left.

Al Green
Your Heart's in Good Hands
(MCA)

There is no more fabulous voice in popular music than Al Green's. An instrument of dumbfounding flexibility, it floats through the R&B and gospel rhythms he favors with an effortlessness that borders on the supernatural, yet it has a brawniness and grit that's beyond most of the gravel-throated shouters often held up as exemplars of soul music. It's nothing short of a tragedy, then, that Green took himself out of the pop game in the late Seventies in order to devote himself full-time to gospel music. Not that the songs of praise he recorded over the past decade-plus were completely disposable: Some of the work approached the heft of his previous efforts, and even the least of them benefited from his miraculous pipes. But something was missing--a drive that Heart, his first secular album since his heyday, lacks as well. Thus, the new recording seems more like an effort to remind people of Green's genius than an attempt by the singer to reassert his artistic hegemony. "Keep on Pushing Love" is a prime example: Producer/co-writer Arthur Baker pours a lot of energy into the track, and Green scoots across it with the impetuous confidence of days gone by. But it bears such a strong resemblance to "Let's Stay Together" that most listeners will walk away from it with the earlier number, rather than the new one, buzzing around in their heads. That's also the effect of "Your Love (Is More Than I Ever Hoped For)" and the other tunes Green co-wrote with David Steele, of Fine Young Cannibals fame. Cannibal Andy Cox's drumming approximates (but cannot duplicate) the work of the Hi rhythm section, and the spice provided by the Memphis Horns tickles fond memories without pushing them aside. The result is preferable to "Could This Be the Love," a Hands ditty in which writer/producer/Jodeci member DeVante attempts to update Green's sound by burying him in New Jack Swing, but it only hints at what Green could do if left to his own devices. The man still sings like an angel. Put him in charge of the control room and he just might create a heaven on earth.

Garth Brooks
Fresh Horses
(Capitol)

Fresh? "The Old Stuff"--the title of the first song here--is more like it. On that track, Brooks is so desperate for acclaim that he accents a by-the-numbers structure (bombastic intro, perfunctory guitar solos) and tedious on-the-road lyrics (one line mentions the Grizzly Rose) with canned cheers straight from a sound-effects library. "The Fever" (associated with that well-known C&W combo, Aerosmith) doesn't sink quite so low, but it manages to exude nearly as much stadium triteness. The ballads, like "The Beaches of Cheyenne," come across somewhat better--they're meant to sound artificial and corny, so it's no surprise that they do--and Brooks's decision to conclude the disc with a seemingly sincere nod to "Ireland" earns marks for idiosyncrasy. But the album as a whole fits too neatly within the modern Nashville landscape that's squeezing the tang of authenticity from country music. Brooks helped create the problem. Now he's got to live with it.

Coolio
Gangsta's Paradise
(Tommy Boy)

Coolio doesn't get a lot of respect, and that's understandable. His eagerness to please makes him an easy target for the fuck-the-police school of hip-hoppers, and he's not above using samples so huge that some of his tunes almost seem like karaoke: witness "Gangsta's Paradise" (built on Stevie Wonder's "Pastime Paradise"), "Cruisin'" (derived from Smokey Robinson's number of the same name), "Smilin'" (Sly and the Family Stone's "You Caught Me Smiling" dominates it) and "A Thing Goin' On" (in which a vocalist repeatedly warbles the hook from Billy Paul's "Me and Mrs. Jones"). But the cheerful obviousness of Coolio's larceny isn't all bad. You don't have to claw through layers of attitude and bullshit in order to enjoy the grooves and raps he's assembled. Their pleasures are right there on the surface for anyone to accept or renounce as he sees fit. There's nothing much to think about on Paradise; Coolio may rap about the street here and there, but he's no documentarian. Slam the damn thing in your car's cassette player, though, and odds are good that you'll arrive at your destination a lot sooner than you anticipated.

end of part 1